Gaza’s “Great March of Return”: an international rallying call for peace and justice

Picture by Ashraf Amra/apaimages. All rights reserved.In 2015, a Guardian editorial
said that “The right of assembly in a public place is truly one of the
cornerstones of liberty – a right to bear witness and bring peaceful pressure
to bear on rulers and the public in support of a cause”. 

Now, consider the carnage at Gaza’s border
with Israel where, on 30 March, tens of thousands of men, women and children joined
the ‘Great March of Return’, a six-week protest to culminate with the
anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), the ethnic
cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948. 

The ‘Great March of Return’ began on the anniversary of ‘Land
Day’ when six Palestinians were killed in 1976 while protesting the confiscation of large tracts
of their land. That injustice has been compounded by another on a greater scale
with 39 Palestinians killed to date and 4,000 injured
as Israeli deployed snipers used live fire on unarmed protesters. 

While the Israeli military claimed the use of
live ammunition was needed to prevent the ‘mass infiltration’ of their border, human rights
organisations have condemned Israel’s use of lethal force as pre-meditated and
illegal. 

B’tselem, the Israeli human
rights organisation, said that “The use of
live ammunition against unarmed persons who pose no danger to anyone is
unlawful”, adding that “as long as soldiers in the field continue to receive
orders to use live fire against unarmed civilians, they are duty-bound to refuse
to comply”.

The
International Criminal Court

Israel has also been condemned by Fatou
Bensouda, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who in a statement
on the killings in Gaza said “Violence against civilians – in a situation such
as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court”. She added that her office would continue to monitor the situation in
Gaza and that incitement or engagement in violence is “liable to prosecution
before the court”. 

The casualties in Gaza include four children: 13-year-old Hussein Mohammad Adnan Madi, 15-year-old Aladdin Yahia
Ismail Zamili, 17-year-old Ibrahim Abu Sha'er and 14-year-old Muhammad Ibrahim Ayyoub, all killed by live fire to
the upper body. 

A 30-year-old
photographer, Yaser
Murtaja, was shot in the chest on 6 April despite clearly wearing a ‘PRESS’
jacket and later died from his injuries; an additional six
journalists were injured by live fire. Shamefully, the Israeli security apparatus has tried to smear
Yaser Murtaja as “an officer in the Hamas security apparatus in Gaza”. 

This account was entirely refuted by Jan
Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which had worked
with Mr Murtaja and said
that he “was a civilian and a journalist”… who “wanted to document civilians
exercising their right to peacefully protest.”

Israel
is deploying a powerful military apparatus on a defenceless, unarmed population
that is using the most fundamental and enduring form of protest that has
sustained progressive change for generations; non-violent direct action. 

From Black Lives Matter to the Anti-Apartheid
Movement in South Africa and, looking further back, to the Suffrage Movement in
Britain which celebrates its centenary this year, the protest movement has been
a touchstone of democracy. Israel’s
targeting of civilians and the press suggests a state at odds with fundamental
democratic freedoms.

Israel’s siege

Gaza’s
two million people have been pushed beyond endurance, subjected to an
eleven-year economic siege that has choked off the economy and created the
highest unemployment rate in the world. 

An 11-year-old child in Gaza has
witnessed three wars and experienced unrelenting poverty in a territory where
more than half the population are refugees dependent on humanitarian assistance. 

According to Save the Children, 90 percent of Gaza’s drinking water is
unfit for human consumption, electricity is available for just 2-4 hours per
day, water-borne diseases are spiking, health and emergency services are
breaking down and fresh food unavailable because of a lack of
refrigeration.

With 60 percent of Gaza’s under-25s unemployed, it is
unsurprising to find so many young people on the front line in the protests for
change; bereft of hope, income, the opportunity to travel and feeling isolated
from the wider world.

Rallying
international support

Gaza’s civil society has seized upon the
‘Great March of Return’ as an opportunity to rally international support and
momentum toward lifting the siege which is at the root of so many social and
economic ills in the territory. 

It is
also a reminder to the world that two-thirds of Palestinians in Gaza are direct
descendants of the refugees who lost their land in 1948 and have a right to
return to their ancestral homes.  

The concern of civil society groups
standing in solidarity with Gaza is that Israel could use the march as a
pretext for yet another onslaught on the territory. 

Israel’s chief military spokesperson,
Brigadier General Ronen Manelis has suggested
that if the protests continue “Israel will expand its reaction to strike the
militants behind it”. Such a scenario
should be opposed by governments and civil society movements across the
world. 

Next month, the United States is
cutting the ribbon on the site
of a new embassy in Jerusalem; a move that appears to dash hopes of a Palestinian
state with its capital in East Jerusalem. And the US has also slashed
its aid to the UN mission in Palestine which is adding further misery to a
vulnerable, marginalised population. 

With a political solution to the crisis in Gaza a seemingly distant
prospect, the only possible route for progress is the mobilisation of civil
society groups across the world standing in unity with Palestinians.